I wanted to bring attention to the many missing airports in China (and around the world!). Brilliant places such as Huanglong Jiuzhai, Luzhou, Qingyang, and Garze are all missing, and would be fantastic to have in the game as options to fly to.
I understand it as not just a China issue (although navigation and GA coverage there is very limited anyway - why?), other new airports around the globe such as the new Western Sydney Airport are still not yet in the game.
Having read a few vague posts, and with a bare-bones understanding of airport editing entails, I wanted to really get a concrete answer as on why new airports can’t be added using the current software we have?
And to further ask (to which I hope a member of the staff team can provide an answer), is this problem being looked at currently/can we expect this to change soon? Or are priorities elsewhere right now?
For everyone - would love to hear if there’s other airfields missing around the world, please share if there’s any you can name off the top of your head. Maybe we can get a list going !
Thanks for pointing me there! I understand that we don’t have the ability anymore, but can’t locate anything related to WED that discusses the removal of this feature? Or is WED not integrated at all with the in-app editor?
That’s insane. Plenty of large commercial airports (aka the popular ones) are in there I’m sure, along with countless GA strips.
Do the frequent topics and questions not indicate community demand for a feature to add missing airports then? I can’t imagine it could be that difficult to integrate with the in-app editor (unless someone with more coding knowledge can tell me otherwise). Further, is there an active feature request for this? Would love to be directed there to voice my concerns
We don’t use WED since 2021. Everything is in-game now, but when editor was initially created there was no tool to add new airports, and that remains for this day.
As far as I remember, it’s on the long wait list. There are pretty a lot of other neccessery features that devs need to work on firts.
(side note - did we have to create airports from scratch with the new editor, or were WED-created airports still compatible with the 3D-editor?)
That’s crazy that this functionality didn’t come with the original in-app editor. I’d make the argument that it’s quite a necessary feature (up there with aircraft lights, volumetric clouds, and other QOL improvements), albeit 10x more simple to add.
Thanks for helping with the logistical reasons why we can’t. Would love to hear from someone closer to the matter as for when we can expect a fix!
Until 2021 we used WED to 2D edits and there were no buildings, but all airports were imported to in-game editor so we could work on 3D too. And now everything is in game, no more third-party apps
Another side note here - and I’m sure I’m not the first to mention this - with the resources available, there’s really little space for custom assets (even the ones we have are mostly, if not all control towers). Even the most crafted 3D airports can start to feel monotonous, without unique airport-specific features at non-major hubs, I feel they are a little lifeless…
Is there any reason why users aren’t seeing more airport-specific assets in the game (for example and widely applicable - signs!)? I’d imagine it would be a “design in blender, import to the editing software” situation, but currently not an option, right? See below for an example from the very talented @SBRY
And quickly - any plans to add more custom, handcrafted assets in the future? The ability to have community-editors and software that is easy to access is a great tool, but it seems like we’ve reached a stage where the limitations are becoming more and more apparent (including the ones listed above + no sloped runways, “boxy” square buildings instead of smooth roofs, lack of taxiway/runway signage, etc…).
What’s preventing these from being a priority? Or can we at least understand that it’s being worked on?
Maybe? For new kinds of assets/custom buildings etc. there’s not much to know because that’s a dev’s job that I have no business answering about. Either it is a priority and something’s being done and we don’t know, or it isn’t a priority and there’s other things to do deemed more important. As it stands nothing to share for now.
But sadly, from the editors’ side, there are standards to follow from the top end such that there’s only so much detail that can be added at the moment. There’s a bit of a wariness from a few in terms of being careful in terms of optimisation. The editors have reached and keep reaching the top end of the standards they are allowed to attain where more can certainly be done in terms of detail; people have their ways Though the justifications as to why that is, are in my opinion a little vague and lack measurement, but not my place to speak at that point.
Like you I’d love more stuff in China, I’ve tried releasing what I could when I could when I was chirping around with WED
No of course! What we have now is great for the optimisation requirements needed. Hopefully in the future we can see either clearer justification for limits, or backend optimisation reaching a level where we can see detailed, handcrafted assets and airports.
Again, would love it if a staff member could please provide an update as to where the team stand regarding all of the above Not looking for a timeframe, just confidence that this is being looked into, or even actively worked on!
Remember that it’s not on the staff to share everything. If a staff replies, that’s his or her choice to do so, but as a rule of thumb for IF, the staff only shares what they deem is important to share, and that’s a decision that cannot have a wrong answer.
Another thing to note: the vast majority of IF’s user base is in either North America or Europe, both of which have significant coverage airport wise. And while a majority should never be the sole deciding factor, IF is a business first and therefore the majority will always have the biggest say. In terms of China specifically, it can be incredibly hard to find info on their airports. Not impossible, but with all the censorship there it makes certain things difficult. Just adds another layer to the cake that we’re trying to cut
Happy to agree to disagree. You make fair points with the difficulty accessing data from the Chinese mainland, as a company based in the US one can understand the challenges here (not to mention the lack of support and open-access data provided by CAAC).
However, whilst for now the majority of users are based in western countries (with a large prevalence in the anglosphere), there’s a sense that more and more new users are joining from different regions - especially south and east asia - it would be wrong to ignore that market from a business perspective.
(quickly before anyone states otherwise - in my experience, I have been able to run IF in China without any need to use a proxy or VPN).
Not begging for an update here, but just putting it out there that it would be nice to hear something r.e. the general direction of small-scale scenery development. Whether it’s important or not is of course subjective, but I’m sure many users look to ground scenery as a key component and would love to hear.
3D buildings elicited a massive fanfare upon release, the demand is there. All that is missing is more development to align the game with the current market.
That’s the thing. They are. Even with many airports in Asia and Australia being made 3D, the market is still Europe and America. Sometimes the stats are frustrating, but arguing with numbers won’t change them
Thanks for the question. It’s a limitation of our scenery editing system when we moved to in-app airport editing. Creating an airport requires us to update a database that is shipped with the app, which requires a slightly better distribution system (added in 26.2), which requires some changes to the editing and parser flow… circular dependency hell
The short of it is it’s possible but we’ve had to prioritise other things in the last few years. I’m working on some adjacent areas which might unlock this soon but TBD.
About why airports in China are missing, I answered earlier this year:
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